The upcoming end of the Biden-era “Humanitarian Parole” program will impact remittances sent to Nicaragua — a crucial economic “lifeline” for the nation’s communist regime, the local newspaper La Prensa reported Monday.
The “Humanitarian Parole” program was an initiative implemented by the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2023 that allowed up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans per month to request entry to the United States by means of a “sponsor,” granting them legal stay and work permits for a period of “up to two years.” Last year, an extensive investigation launched by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement found evidence of rampant fraud and widespread abuse in the program.
Reports published over the weekend indicated that the administration of President Donald Trump will terminate in April the legal status of the reportedly 532,000 migrants that entered the United States through the parole program, of which over 93,000 are Nicaraguan nationals.
La Prensa, citing local economists, stated in its Monday report that the end of the parole program will have a negative effect on the dollar amount of remittances sent by Nicaraguans in the U.S. to Nicaragua, one of the “main lifelines” sustaining the regime of communist dictator Daniel Ortega.
Nicaraguan economist Juan Sebastián Chamorro told La Prensa that it is “difficult to estimate” the exact sum of remittances that will be affected once the parole protections are rescinded, asserting that there are “many” who entered the United States through the parole program and have since then changed their legal status, potentially allowing them to stay in the U.S.
“We don’t have figures on that,” Chamorro said. “What we can say is that there will surely be a decrease in remittances.”
Economist Enrique Saenz explained to La Prensa that “we must also consider those who are threatened because they are in the United States in an irregular manner” in addition to those affected by the end of the parole program. He estimated that at least 60,000 will be left without deportation protections come April.
In recent years, dictator Ortega’s brutal crackdown on dissidents and ongoing persecution of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church has forced hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans to flee their nation. The exodus of Nicaraguans has resulted in a dramatic surge in remittances sent from abroad by migrants, who send money back to their friends and family to help offset the precarious economic situation in the country.
Reports published in early March indicated that Nicaragua received $448.2 million in remittances from abroad in January 2025 — of which $373.5 million, 83 percent of the total, originated from the United States. In 2024, the Central American nation received a record-breaking $5.243 billion in remittances, representing over 27 percent of its entire Gross Domestic Product (GPD), according to statistical information published by the World Bank in December. Per the financial institution, Nicaragua is the third-most remittance-dependent economy in the world, surpassed only by Tajikistan and Tonga.
Saenz told La Prensa that the drop in remittances as a result of the end of the parole program will not only affect Nicaragua at a macroeconomic level but will also impact families dependent on remittances from relatives in the U.S.
“Thousands of families depend on remittances that came from the United States. Almost all of the remittances are destined for consumption,” Saenz said, stressing that he also estimates that small and medium-sized companies’ activities will likewise be affected.
“Ten people who are affected, that’s ten families who will suffer. If there are 1,000, if there are 10,000, if there are 50,000, then 50,000 families will suffer,” he added.
Another Nicaraguan economist, who spoke to La Prensa under condition of anonymity, stated that the end of the parole program will also deepen the employment crisis in the country and could provoke greater social pressure on Ortega’s regime.
“All that army of people who may be deported or forced to return to Nicaragua will not find employment easily and will rather deepen both unemployment and underemployment,” he explained.
La Prensa pointed out that the exodus of Nicaraguan migrants allowed Ortega’s regime to experience a reduction in labor market pressure, as there were fewer citizens seeking employment. This effectively reduced official government unemployment statistics. In 2023, a group of experts explained that Ortega benefited both economically and politically from encouraging the mass migration of Nicaraguans, as the remittances led to an increase in local economic activity and an increase in tax revenue from sales taxes and other surcharges while “calming” social unrest.
“Now with the return of more Nicaraguans, it is expected that they will start looking for a job, which may deteriorate the official statistics,” La Prensa predicted. “In addition, in recent years, remittances were serving as a retaining wall for the increase in poverty because they were being used for consumption, which created the illusion that poverty was under control.”
It is estimated that over 850,000 Nicaraguans have left their country since 2018. Ortega began intensifying his persecution of dissidents that year following a wave of peaceful anti-communist protests. Of the roughly 95,000 Nicaraguans who left Nicaragua in 2024, some 58,000 entered the United States as beneficiaries of the “Humanitarian Parole” program. Experts further estimated in January that 80,000 Nicaraguans are expected to exit the nation in 2025.
Manuel Orozco, a specialist in migration issues at the Inter-American Dialogue, told the Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial in January that he predicted Nicaraguan migration to drop off in 2025.
“I would expect a decrease in migration by 2025 for demographic reasons because many people have already left, and also because there is an accommodation, an acceptance [by the population], of a repressive system and living on remittances,” he said.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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